English Garden by Bike

Braiding

I am pleased to report that I beat jet lag last night. After 5 hours of sleep on the plane I went to bed at 11:30, slept thought the night and woke up at 6:15am.

First thing on the agenda was breakfast and French braiding. We walked to the bakery to pick up fresh bread. I had a chocolate croissant and pretzel bread with strawberry jam. I could eat that for every meal while I am here if I could.

Hair of the day

O's favorite swing

 Two side braids into a pony tail was today's hair style for V. We always try to do a new braid every day that we are together.

Isar River

Tanja, Vanessa, and I jumped on the bikes with Olivia in the bike trailer and we rode to the English Gardens in the city. It was about a 10 minute bike ride. We took a trail on the way there and crossed the river with nudest locals laying out on the rocks.

The English Gardens is a huge park in Munich. It has trails for walking, biking, and horse back riding. There are quite a few creeks running through as well as the Isar River. It has lots of grassy open space with people hanging out on the lawns and many trees so that park actually has more shade than I was expecting. This park is cool because it is in the city but has forresty feeling. The grass is mowed but it isn't like a French garden with perfectly manicured flowers and hedges. It felt more free.

This is the Chinese gazebo type thing in the center of the park. I guess on the weekends they play live music from the top of the structure.

Vanessa and Tanja on the bikes. We saw a ton of teenagers floating down the river today with the current.

Munich Surfers

Surprise of the city: Munich has surfers. The river has this natural rapid right after the bridge and there were quite a few guys in wetsuits jumping in with their surfboards. It looked like they were surfing on a wave pool going back and forth  in the rapids. Not California surfing by any standards, but I could tell that there guys were pretty skilled.

In the middle of the garden is a Biergarten where they sell lunch and snacks and of course beer. We ate a snack and had a drink. Johannisbeerschorle (red cups) and apple juice (not beer).

Our Slack liner friend Sasha

After eating we hung out on the grass in the shade. There were a ton of people doing slack lining, something I have only seen a few times in the US. They hang a slack line from tree to tree and then try to balance and do tricks on it. Vanessa and Tanja convinced me to ask this guy if we can try. We did, and WOAH it's hard!













I was nervous about breaking a hip while up on the line, and my legs would not stop shaking! Super hard to balance on the line thingy that is only about 3 inches wide. This counted as doing my one thing a day that scares me.

Sasha giving Vanessa a bouncing tutorial.

V giving the balancing a go.

We rode the bikes home through the city, about 20 minutes and I felt like we had a good balance of activity and relaxation in the park today.  The weather has been perfect since I got here. Being in Europe feels the way my summers should be.

Vanessa and I said good bye to Tanja who had to go back to St. Gallen tonight. We will see her again this weekend when Christina gets here for the Devils reunion.

Now we are watching the Women's Gymnastics team finals live, but in German. I miss the American commentators giving the back stories about the Americans. It has been circulating on Facebook that I should be in charge of Team USA's competition hair. That would be so fun! I would pull off an amazing assortment of braids and eliminate the ugly clips and scrunchies that are sooo early 90's. Maybe I'll make a hair portfolio and apply for the job.